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> Concorde, ... ultimately failed economically due to ... regulatory restrictions on overland supersonic flights. Hardly fait to blame regulation here, the pr

• pfdietz 1y ago
  The problem was it was very expensive. There should be a name for the principle that one needn't look for more complicated explanations when economic ones suffice.
  • xdfgh1112 1y ago
    That's Occam's razor more or less.
  • wongarsu 1y ago
    And it was very expensive because it was a Cold War prestige project. A three-way race between the US, Europe and the Soviet Union. Just like the Apollo program it was forced into existence through force of will, on a tight deadline with limited economic considerations. If anything it's a miracle how practical the Concorde was and how long it remained in operation
    • pfdietz 1y ago
      That was why it was done at all, but not why it was expensive.
  • jajko 1y ago
    At that time, maybe yes. These days, it would fail in many other criteria. Sound pollution is brutal, can't be effectively mitigated and it was all just about rich sparing few hours to get to NY/Paris faster. Fuck the rich, take normal airliner like everybody else if you are so poor to not have your own jet. We are not bending health standards to whims of few moderately wealthy individuals, sounds like some societal progress there. A sort of self-regulating issue for a change.
  • phire 1y ago
    It was expensive because they only built 14 aircraft (plus 6 prototypes). And the overflight bans were a large part of the reason for all the sales to fall though. If the development/maintenance costs had been split over hundreds of craft as planned, they would have been much cheaper to both buy and maintain. There is still the issue of high fuel costs, but fun fact, most of the cancellations came in months before the 1973 oil crisis.
    • pfdietz 1y ago
      The most important datum is that Boeing refused to build an SST without large government subsidy. This was evidence they decided there wasn't much of a market. And this decision was taken before the 1973 mideast war that kicked off the oil embargo and energy crisis. Today, we see similar evidence in that Boom is being forced to develop their own engine because none of the actual engine makers want to make an engine suitable for a SST. I believe there is considerable skepticism that Boom will be able to do this, btw. It should be noted that even subsonic airliners have gotten a bit slower over time. Fuel economy > travel time for them to some extent, even being subsonic.
      • phire 1y ago
        The SST project was basically a government project. They even had both Boeing, Lockheed and North American submitting competing design proposals. They were also originally targeting the transcontinental market, so it would have exclusively flown over land, so the sonic boom issue was way more devastating. They actually ran tests, flying supersonic military aircraft over Oklahoma City for months to see how regular supersonic booms would affect the public. The public outcry was a large part of the reason why congress cancelled the SST project in 1971, long before 1973. They then immediately introduced the supersonic overflight ban to hinder operation of Concorde.
        • pfdietz 1y ago
          There was also concern that the NOx produced in the stratosphere would affect the ozone layer. This was about the time concern about the ozone layer was ramping up.
• Spooky23 1y ago
  It was state of the art 1960/70 tech. Cruising across the ocean on afterburner is a feat, but doesn’t make sense - even the air force delivered super cruise on the F22.
  • nradov 1y ago
    The Concorde also super cruised. Afterburners were mainly only used to take off and accelerate up to cruising speed.
• burnt-resistor 1y ago
  That's why now there is development of very carefully-designed, pointier craft that exploit Mach cutoff so there's almost no boom.
  • Voultapher 1y ago
    From I understand and based on this [1] what current research can do is e.g ~0.8 bar overpressure instead of ~1.2 bar. That's better sure, but the sonic boom is still in the 80+db range on the ground. I wouldn't call that almost no boom. [1] https://youtu.be/CM5lbIzH2kc https://youtu.be/CM5lbIzH2kc
    • burnt-resistor 1y ago
      You're splitting hairs unreasonably. The purpose is to avoid 1950's fighter jet-style absurd sonic booms that rattled homes. That goal appears achievable. Whether it makes economic or environmental sense is another discussion.
• jillesvangurp 1y ago
  The sonic boom definitely was a problem when flying over land. But part of the issue behind the regulations were also that the Concorde was a French British collaboration and did not involve US aviation companies. The only airlines that operated the Concorde were British Airways and Air France. The only cities in the US that were reachable by the Concorde were on the east coast and the planes would slow down and come in subsonic. There are a lot of other valid reasons for regulations in the US; but the lack of US suppliers, jobs, etc. didn't make it easier.
  • cyanydeez 1y ago
    Right, because if they flew supersonic anywhere in land they broke Windows. Youre using reality after the fact to act like the choice wasnt self limiting
    • LargoLasskhyfv 1y ago
      Dude... in the 70ies to 80ies I grew up where they gave a shit about supersonic flights, sometimes even low level. By the military, because COLT WAR! Sometimes one could read about broken windows indeed, but that depended more on how low they flew (While being supersonic). Concorde @M2 somewhere between 12 to 16km altitude wouldn't do that.
      • Y_Y 1y ago
        Concorde certainly did manage to damage buidings, for example by going supersonic while still over land. Paywalled academic article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0007362873900315 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/000736...
        • LargoLasskhyfv 1y ago
          Hrrm. Let's see. The boom levels experienced at these sites caused no greater response than the environment (weather, people, traffic). At two of the sites no boom damage was observed, however at Castleward house on two occasions a few roof slates were cracked and loosened. No conclusions could be reached as to the cumulative effect on a building of a large number of booms. Just from the abstract. No mention of altitude, could still have been relatively low, still climbing. Which always could be avoided by climbing slower.
• arein3 1y ago
  It failed because US/Boeing coyld not make a competitor to EU's plane, and feared airlines would buy it, so they decided to ban it instead of competition.